The Mütter Museum is a medical history and science museum located in the Center City Philadelphia. It contains a collection of anatomical and pathological specimens, wax models, and antique medical equipment. The museum is part of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. The original purpose of the museum, founded with a gift from Dr. Thomas Dent Mütter on December 11, 1858, was for the education of medical professionals, medical students, and invited guests of College Fellows, and did not become open to non-Fellows until the mid-1970s.

The College of Physicians of Philadelphia is itself not a teaching organization, but rather a member organization or "scientific body dedicated to the advancement of science and medicine".

The museum has a collection of over 37,000 specimens, of which about 10% were on display as of 2023. This does not include the large literary collection contained within the Historical Medical Library, which is also housed within the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.

Collection items, artifacts, and specimens were acquired globally, and as Ella Wade (curator from 1939 to 1957) says, "The Mütter Museum Committee, as the minutes show, proceeded to spend Dr. Mütter's money like sailors on shore leave".

  • The Hyrtl Skull Collection, a collection of 139 skulls from Josef Hyrtl, an Austrian anatomist. This collection's original purpose was to show the diversity of cranial anatomy in Europeans, thereby disproving the racial science of phrenology.
  • The skeleton of Mary Ashberry, a woman with achondroplasia who died in 1856 due to medical negligence during childbirth.
  • 10 skulls and 5 crania with extensive syphilitic involvement, many of which are specimens from the original Mütter donation.
  • Intestinal specimens collected during the 1849 cholera outbreak by Dr. John Neill, curator of what was then known as the Pathological Cabinet of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia
  • 19th and early 20th century tattooed skin

Wax models

Augmenting the real human specimens on display are numerous wax models displaying various examples of pathology in the human body. These models, mostly produced by Tramond of Paris and Joseph Towne of London, were used for educational purposes when cadavers were difficult to acquire and preserve. Some moulages are known to have used skeletal remains as a part of their construction. One of the most famous wax models on display in the Mütter Museum is the last known remaining model of Madame Dimanche, who had a, "human horn (cutaneous horn). Successfully removed after six-years growth from Madame Dimanche, a Parisian widow, in the early 19th century. From the original collection of Dr. Thomas Dent Mütter (1811-1859)".

Other specimens

The museum's holdings also include:

  • A malignant tumor removed from President Grover Cleveland's hard palate
  • The conjoined liver and plaster torso death cast of Thai-American Siamese twins Chang and Eng Bunker
  • A piece of thoracic tissue removed from John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln
  • A section of the brain of Charles J. Guiteau, the assassin of President James A. Garfield
  • The Chevalier Jackson Foreign Body Collection, a collection of 2,374 swallowed or inhaled objects that Dr. Jackson extracted from patients’ throats, esophaguses, and lungs during his almost 75-year-long career. Most of the items are on display.
  • Half of Albert Einstein's brain

Exhibitions

Dr. Benjamin Rush Medicinal Plant Garden

Dr. Rush helped to found the College of Physicians of Philadelphia in 1787, which is now home to the Mütter Museum. Dr. Rush pushed for the maintenance of a medicinal garden to allow College Fellows to replenish items in their medicinal chests. The Garden was eventually founded in 1937. It displays between 50 and 60 medicinal herbs and plants, which include strawberries, wormwort, and bugleweed.

Special exhibitions

The museum is also host to a variety of changing special exhibits.

Curators

Dr. Joseph McFarland

Dr. Joseph McFarland was the curator of the Mütter Museum from 1937 to 1945. He published multiple papers looking into some of the more questionable histories of museum collections, including The Soap Lady, and the Mütter American Giant. McFarland was able to prove, through dogged historical and archival research, that Leidy's stories for both "The Petrified Woman" at the Mütter Museum, and "The Petrified Man" at the Wistar Institute were complete nonsense. McFarland read through the annals of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia nearly 70 years after The Mütter American Giant first graced its halls and ascertained that there truly was nothing known about the former owner.

Ella N. Wade

Ella Wade (1892–1980), began her tenure at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia as a clerk. She became the first female curator and the first curator without an MD.

Gretchen Worden

In 1974, Gretchen Worden, who had no prior work experience, wrote to the museum's curator asking for a job. She was hired as a curatorial assistant in 1975 and became the museum's curator in 1982 and its director in 1988.

Worden was a frequent guest on the Late Show with David Letterman, "displaying a mischievous glee as she frightened him with human hairballs and wicked-looking Victorian surgical tools, only to disarm him with her antic laugh" and appeared in numerous PBS, BBC and cable television documentaries (including an episode of Errol Morris' show First Person) as well as NPR's "Fresh Air with Terry Gross" on the museum's behalf. She was also instrumental in the creation of numerous Mütter Museum projects, including the popular Mütter Museum calendars and the book, The Mütter Museum: Of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. During Worden's tenure, the visitorship of the museum grew from several hundred visitors each year to, at the time of her death, more than 60,000 tourists annually.

After her death, the Mütter Museum opened a gallery in her memory. In an article written about the gallery's September 30, 2005 opening, The New York Times described the "Gretchen Worden Room":